


Personal Best

by Mephistophelia



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Enjolras, Biromantic Enjolras, Courfeyrac being Courfeyrac, Feelings? In My Good Christian Suburbs?, Gratuitous Descriptions of Jogging, M/M, R Is As Gay As The Day Is Long, Slice of Life, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23295940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: Enjolras has always assumed he's terrible at dating. He's right, but not for the reason he thought.Or, the modern AU where Enjolras is training for marathons, Grantaire is pining so loudly you can hear it in Spain, and Courfeyrac has had enough.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 165





	Personal Best

**Author's Note:**

> Will I finish this? Lord knows.
> 
> Am I looking for a distraction as I settle into week 2.5 of quarantine? Absolutely.
> 
> This is something from ages ago I found while distracting myself from the news by cleaning out my desk, and I figured why not, let's post it.
> 
> It'll be a two-parter if I can jazz myself up to write the second part.

It was a cool September morning—his favorite kind for running. Enjolras dressed quickly, pulling a gray hoodie over a black tee and basketball shorts, and swept up his keys from the small table near the door.

It was Sunday, which meant that Enjolras knew the whereabouts of his roommates without any hesitation at all. Grantaire would be at the studio already, working through another of the pieces for his studio final. And Courfeyrac wouldn't emerge from his room until around noon, when he would begin complaining loudly about his hangover or the girl who had stood him up last night.

Enjolras fully intended to be miles away by that time.

Cracking his back, he slipped his earbuds into his ears and sped down the three flights of stairs to street level, spilling out into the Boulevard des Abbés.

His form wasn't great, he knew that. He held his shoulders too tight, and his arms didn't move enough. But his stride was easy and he rarely lost his breath until after the seventh mile, so as far as he was concerned, all critical discussions of running form could go straight to hell.

He eased into the run, lengthening his stride as he reached the end of the block. The afternoon anchor from Al-Jazeera discussed the pending backstop solution in Northern Ireland through his earbuds. These days, he found it almost impossible to listen to the news if he wasn't moving. It was too easy to become consumed with worry, and there was always something else that needed doing: an essay to write, an argument to have, the bar to study for.

Here, drifting onto the trail along the left bank, jogging past tourists with cameras and high schoolers smoking cigarettes, he could turn off the part of his brain that felt the need to do, to worry, to panic, and he could simply listen.

He'd used to play football for the same feeling; at lycée, he'd been a star forward. But one couldn't play football and listen to Al-Jazeera at the same time, and when he ran, he didn't even have to speak to other people.

Courfeyrac had dragged him to a match a few months ago at the Luxembourg, the Musain crowd scrimmaging four on three with Enjolras needed to even the teams. He'd almost taken pleasure in it, their surprise that he knew his way around the pitch. He'd dribbled straight past Joly, faked the feet straight out from under Bahorel, and sent a wicked top-corner shot past Jehan's grasping fingertips. If he thought about it, he could still remember the sound of the ball sagging into the net, and Grantaire's exasperated howl from left defense, "You can't be Robespierre and Zidane at the same time, fucking _hell,_ be shit at something for once!"

It had felt good, hooking a shot again. Exhilarating. He hadn't realized how much he missed it. But there was no time for games like that, not anymore. Not with the bar exam in six months and an oral practicum on existential theory the next day and a social revolution on the horizon and the whole world going to shit around his ears. He didn't need more adrenaline. Football gave him joy; running gave him calm. Though both were in short supply, calm had begun to feel like the more valuable commodity.

It was impossible to be lonely, to be worried, to feel alone, when you ran.

He forced himself to conserve his energy, pacing himself behind another jogger along the river. The man he followed was exceptionally fit and conspicuously shirtless, which Enjolras seemed alone in finding irritating. But the pace was right, and if he pushed too hard, he'd have to cave and take the métro home, which he loathed doing. The last time, when he'd accidentally run past Montmartre and knew another half-mile would make him throw up, he'd made the odyssey back the length of the 13 to the 10 train, sweaty and out of breath, and a woman had hissed vulgar suggestions at him until she disembarked at Sèvres Babylone and he renewed his faith in God.

No, he had to know his limits. It wasn't his strong suit, but he was learning.

He could only push himself so far until he vomited into a wastebin at the Sorbonne métro station, or the vibrating terror of a panic attack left him gasping on the bathroom floor, praying Courfeyrac hadn't heard.

Easy.

You're only human, after all, Enjolras thought, and ran.

* * *

"Didn't think you were coming back this time," Courfeyrac said, as Enjolras unlocked the door and dragged himself into the apartment.

He wasn't alone—Grantaire sat on the couch, Xbox controller in hand, barely looking away from medieval-style dragon-based game filled the tiny screen of their TV. Studio work must have been going terribly that day, as Grantaire usually didn't come home on weekends until he'd accomplished all he meant to. Enjolras pulled off his hoodie and wiped the sweat from his face with it, tossing his keys back onto the table. Grantaire glanced briefly in his direction, then pointedly whipped his head back to the game. Coping mechanism, then. Distract yourself from the work with something mindless, running a few miles or slaying a few dragons. Enjolras could understand that.

"How far did you go this time?" Courfeyrac called. He was working in the kitchen, pan-frying what looked to be a salmon fillet. Of the three roommates, he'd always been the most ambitious in the kitchen. If Enjolras had his way, he'd live almost entirely off meal-replacement shakes, toast, and soft-boiled eggs, a total lack of interest in the culinary arts that Courfeyrac had long since declared positively un-French.

"Eight," he said, sidling past Courfeyrac to draw a glass of water from the tap.

Courfeyrac gaped; even Grantaire paused the game.

"Eight?" Grantaire said. "Miles? Why, for fuck's sake?"

Enjolras drained the full glass, then poured himself another. "You know I run until I'm finished worrying, R."

"And it took you eight miles to stop worrying?"

"No," Enjolras said with a shrug. "My leg cramped first."

Courfeyrac swore, though he didn't look up from the fish. "Fucking get something to eat at last. That's half the reason you're so anxious. You forget to eat and don't drink water for three days at a time, and then you come to me and R wondering why your whole body's vibrating."

Enjolras raised his second glass in an ironic salute and drained that too. "You're back early," he said to Grantaire, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Grantaire shrugged. A splash of green paint ran across his forehead, hairline to eyebrow. Other than that, his face had gone distinctly pink. "Can't I want to spend time with my gentlemen-roommates on a fine Sunday morning like this?"

"I'm reviewing my notes on the Geneva Convention today," Enjolras said drily. "If you wanted an activity."

Grantaire faked vomiting, then picked up the Xbox controller again. "Just what every weekend needs. War crimes."

"I'm going to take a shower," Enjolras said, ignoring this.

"Good," Courfeyrac said from the stove. "You smell like my high school locker room. Stress and angst and repressed hormones."

Enjolras rolled his eyes. It was an old joke, and a tired one at that, though Courfeyrac was more than capable of stretching an old and tired joke far beyond its usual bounds. Though Enjolras had made attempts at dating, hormones never played much of a role in it. It wasn't that a relationship didn't interest him, or that the idea of being intimate with another person repulsed him. It just never seemed the point, that was all. Enjolras' total indifference to sexuality had always startled Courfeyrac, who contained enough libido for two medium-horny adults, but while he joked about it, there was never a note of malice in it.

Grantaire, on the other hand, kept his eyes firmly locked on the video game, and—as always—refused to comment on the matter.

"The fuck do you know about my hormones, Courf?" Enjolras said.

"I know you haven't hooked up with anyone since the Thénardier girl after the Bastille Day thing at Bahorel's. Christ, my friend, I know you say it's fine, but if I were you my hormones would be so repressed they'd set up a labor union."

Enjolras scowled, which, far from having the desired effect, only made Courfeyrac laugh.

"She's hot, man. Smart, too. I don't know why you don't text her. Think about something besides war crimes today."

"She's sleeping with Marius, you know," Enjolras said coolly.

He set the glass in the sink, a soft resonant ding echoing through the half kitchen, and turned toward the bathroom. Had he not turned, he would have seen Courfeyrac, in a state of total shock, completely abandon his fish, which had begun to char in the bottom of the pan. A loud roar from the centaur indicated that Grantaire, too, had been distracted enough to lose a life.

"No way," Grantaire said.

"Was she fucking Marius when _you_ slept with her?" Courfeyrac demanded.

Enjolras didn't respond, not even when Courfeyrac crowed like a startled rooster, his "no _shit_ " loud enough to alarm the neighbors.

Frankly, Enjolras couldn't care less what his roommates thought about his ill-advised night with Eponine in Bahorel's spare room four months before. The rest of his friends slept around like it was their revolutionary duty to repopulate the world, and then the one night he had a little to drink and found himself alone with a smart person who could quote Stendhal and debate the politics of the partie socialiste and who he didn't feel any aversion toward sleeping with, and of course that woman would already be sleeping with Marius.

Well, it wasn't as if she'd told him that until after.

And it wasn't, really, as if he much cared. They still talked now and again, he and Eponine, though never about what had happened between them that night. That particular topic of conversation had died the moment he ducked out of Bahorel's party and into the Rue de Bac, buttoning up his shirt. No, their texts were more practical now. A profanity-filled commiseration after Le Pen's strong poll showing. Once he'd floated the draft of a speech by her, and she'd moved is commas around a bit, though he reminded her that it was a speech and he'd be speaking it, so comma placement was a bit of a moot point.

That was what he really needed, anyway, he told himself, stripping off his tee-shirt and stepping into the shower. Someone to think with. The rest he could do alone.

The shower felt like heaven, stripping away the sweat that had begun to dry and chill his skin. Enjolras closed his eyes and let the steam swirl around him, intimate as the touch of another person's hand. As he stood under the showerhead, he hummed a song he didn't recognize, a jaunty tune that sounded halfway between a military march and a sea shanty. It wasn't until he was toweling off in the steamy bathroom that he realized the song was the theme from Grantaire's video game—catchier than it had any right to be.

Well, he thought, pulling on a fresh tee-shirt, the Geneva Convention hadn't changed in the past few decades. Stalling a few hours more probably wouldn't make a difference.

He padded back into the common room, where Grantaire had again immersed himself in the game. Courfeyrac sat next to him, eating slightly charred salmon and dill on toast with the plate balanced on his knees. Enjolras dropped down onto the couch on Grantaire's opposite side and rested one of the throw pillows in his lap. Without meaning to—the couch wasn't huge—his knee brushed against Grantaire's thigh.

"What are you doing?" Grantaire said, his voice slightly strangled.

Hurt, Enjolras scooted away, until there was half the width of a couch cushion between them. "Sorry."

Courfeyrac took what seemed to be a very knowing bite of salmon.

"No, it's OK," Grantaire said, "it's just, I mean, you never. You don't like video games. Too capitalist."

Too _capitalist?_ Was that what his roommates thought of him, that he couldn't stop thinking about Marx for twenty seconds?

They weren't _wrong_ , if so, but it would've been nice to get the benefit of the doubt.

"The run didn't shake the anxiety out," Enjolras said with a shrug. "Maybe this will. Can I play?"

Grantaire stared as though his roommate had just sprouted a second head. "With me?"

This seemed like an odd point of confusion. Maybe Grantaire was more hungover than Enjolras thought. With an awkward mumble, he reached under the couch for the second controller and handed it to Enjolras. It seemed that he took a great deal more effort than necessary to make sure their hands didn't touch.

"Competitive or collaborative?" Grantaire said, making steadfast eye contact with the menu screen instead of Enjolras.

"Collaborative, yeah?" Enjolras said. "I think we make a pretty good team, you and me."

Grantaire must have swallowed wrong, if the sudden fit of coughing was any indication. He jumped up from the couch and darted into the bathroom, where Enjolras and Courfeyrac could both hear the ringing echo of his cough against the close tile.

Enjolras blinked, then looked at Courfeyrac with nothing short of bemusement.

"Did I...say something wrong?" he asked.

Courfeyrac shook his head and popped the rest of his breakfast into his mouth in one oversized bite. He stood up from the couch and sauntered into the kitchen in search of a second cup of coffee, leaving Enjolras to stare after him in bewilderment.

"Christ," Courfeyrac said. "You sweet summer children."

**Author's Note:**

> Toss a coin* to your witcher**!
> 
> *kudo or comment  
> **fic author who's struggling to motivate herself to write the ending.


End file.
